Facebook Inc (FB): Lizard Squad Is Lying, The Site Was Not Hacked

Facebook and its photo-sharing app Instagram were down for close to an hour around 1:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday. A hacker group called Lizard Squad was quick to take credit for the outages that affected users worldwide. But the social networking giant has shot down Lizard Squad’s claims. Facebook said in a statement that the outages were caused by an internal software networking error.

Facebook is back to 100% for everyone

A Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) spokeswoman told James Vincent of The Verge that the temporary outages were “not the result of a third-party attack.” She added that the social networking service was taken down because Facebook engineers introduced a change that affected its configuration systems. Users from around the globe experience the issue, both via mobile apps and on the Web.

Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) said both services are “back to 100% for everyone.” During the outages, the social networking users were greeted with the message, “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.” Facebook’s mobile messaging service WhatsApp did not experience any issues. According to Roisin O’Connor of The Independent, instant messaging service Hipchat, matchmaking app Tinder, AIM, and MySpace were also taken down.

Lizard Squad has taken credit for many outages

If Lizard Squad was indeed involved in taking down multiple sites in one go, it is cause of a big worry. This group of unknown hackers has taken credit for many high-profile outages. Lizard Squad claims to be behind the Sony PlayStation Network outage and the take-down of Microsoft’s Xbox Live late last month.

Yesterday, Lizard Squad threatened Malaysia Airlines that the infamous hacker group would dump data they have stolen during the process of defacing the website of Malaysia Airlines. On Monday, Web surfers visiting the airline’s website were greeted with a bragging message from the hacker group rather than flight timetables.